State GOP leaders grab issue of Obama eligibility

The GOP members of Congress who booted Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi from the speaker’s seat when they took the majority in the U.S. House this month may be the least of President Barack Obama’s concerns as the 2012 presidential campaign assembles.

That’s because in Pennsylvania, and in at least a couple of other states, there are Republican-controlled Houses, Senates and governors’ offices where being developed right now are plans to use state law to demand proof of constitutional eligibility from presidential candidates before they would be allowed on the state ballot.

From Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas there already is confirmation of such plans. Arizona is likely to have the same plan, and other states are expected to be in the works as legislatures approach the dates when they will convene.

Pennsylvania

In Pennsylvania, there was excitement over the GOP majority of both houses of the state legislature as well as the governor’s office.

Assemblyman Daryl Metcalfe told WND he is preparing to circulate a memo among his fellow GOP lawmakers for cosponsors for his proposal that would demand documentation of constitutional eligibility.

“We aren’t sworn in until Jan. 4,” he said. “Once we’re sworn in we’ll be introducing the legislation that would require presidential candidates to prove their natural born citizenship before they are allowed to file petitions to have their name on the state ballot.”

He described it as a “problem” that there has been no established procedure for making sure that presidential candidates meet the Constitution’s requirements for age, residency and being a “natural born citizen.”

“We hope we would be able to pass this legislation and put it into law before the next session,” he said.

He said any one of the states imposing such a requirement would be effective in solving his concerns.

“I think the public relations nightmare that would ensue if any candidate would thumb their noses at a single state would torpedo their campaign,” he told WND.

Georgia

Another state that will be in play on the issue is Georgia, where Rep. Mark Hatfield confirmed to WND that he will have a similar proposal pending.

He had introduced the legislation at the end of last year’s session to put fellow lawmakers on alert that the issue was coming.

“I do plan to reintroduce the bill,” he told WND today. “We’ll move forward with trying to get it before a committee.”

In Georgia, Republicans hold majorities in both house of the legislature as well as “every constitutional statewide office,” he noted.

“I would be optimistic that we can [adopt the legislation],” he said.

Hatfield said if only one or two states adopt such requirements, it readily will be apparent whether a candidate has issues with eligibility documentation or not. And while he noted a president could win a race without support from a specific state, a failure to qualify on the ballot “would give voters in other states pause, about whether or not a candidate is in fact qualified,” he said.

“My goal is to make sure any person that aspires to be president meets the constitutional requirements,” he said. “This is a first step in that direction.”

Arizona

It was last session when the Arizona House of Representatives adopted a provision that would have required documentation of eligibility from presidential candidates, but the measure died through the inaction of the state Senate in the closing days of the session.

Sponsor Rep. Judy Burges told WND at the time that her plan would be renewed this session.

His effort was the first wave of a surging tide of developing questions that could be a hurdle to a second term for Obama, who escaped such demands last year when the Arizona Senate failed to act on a similar plan after the House approved it.

It includes an effective date of Sept. 1, 2011, in time for 2012 presidential campaigning.

State Rep. Leo Berman

Berman told WND he’s seen neither evidence nor indication that Obama qualifies under the Constitution’s requirement that a president be a “natural-born citizen,” a requirement not imposed on most other federal officers.

“If the federal government is not going to vet these people, like they vetted John McCain, we’ll do it in our state,” he said.

He noted the Senate’s investigation into McCain because of the Republican senator’s birth in Panama to military parents.

Berman also said there will be pressure on any lawmaker who opposes the bill, since voters would wonder why they wouldn’t want such basic data about a president revealed. And he said even if one state adopts the requirement, there will be national implications, because other states would be alerted to a possible problem.

“If Obama is going to run for re-election in 2012, he’ll have to show our secretary of state his birth certificate and prove he’s a natural-born citizen,” he said. “This is going to be significant.”

Berman said he’s convinced there are problems with Obama’s eligibility, or else his handlers would not be so persistent in keeping the information concealed.

A year ago, polls indicated that roughly half of American voters were aware of a dispute over Obama’s eligibility. Recent polls, however, by organizations including CNN, show that roughly six in 10 American voters hold serious doubts that Obama is eligible under the Constitution’s demands.

The Texas House is expected to be dominated by the GOP, with a roughly 2-1 margin, and Republicans will hold probably 19 of the 31 seats in the state Senate. The governor’s office is Republican.

Other state plans also might be in the works but unannounced yet. Officials with the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures said they were not tracking bills in development, or “prefiled” bills.

Their monitoring will begin after the proposals formally are submitted, they said.

Last year, several other states listened to proposals that could have had an impact on eligibility documentation. In New Hampshire, officials wanted to require candidates to meet the “qualifications contained in the U.S. Constitution.” In Oklahoma, lawmakers heard a plan to let voters decide the issue, and in South Carolina, the plan was to prevent candidates from being on the ballot unless “that person shows conclusive evidence that he is a legal citizen of the United States.”

Further, several other states discussed requirements for candidates, but they did not specifically address the Article 2, Section 1 constitutional compliance, so it’s unclear whether they would have addressed Obama’s situation.

“To amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of President to include with the committee’s statement of organization a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate, together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the Office of President under the Constitution.”

The bill also provides:

“Congress finds that under … the Constitution of the United States, in order to be eligible to serve as President, an individual must be a natural born citizen of the United States who has attained the age of 35 years and has been a resident within the United States for at least 14 years.”

The sponsors’ goal is for the bill to become effective for the 2012 presidential election. The legislation now is pending in a House committee and has more than a dozen co-sponsors.

Officials today told WND the bill is pending, and plans are that it will be acted on through the committee process in the U.S. House.

There have been dozens of lawsuits and challenges over the fact that Obama’s eligibility never has been documented. The “Certification of Live Birth” his campaign posted online is a document that Hawaii is a document that has made available to those not born in the state.

The controversy stems from the Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, which states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

The challenges to Obama’s eligibility allege he does not qualify because he was not born in Hawaii in 1961 as he claims, or that he fails to qualify because he was a dual citizen, through his father, of the U.S. and the United Kingdom when he was born and the framers of the Constitution specifically excluded dual citizens from eligibility.

Complicating the issue is the fact that besides Obama’s actual birth documentation, he has kept from the public documentation including his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, Illinois State Bar Association records, baptism records and his adoption records.

There are several cases still pending before the courts over Obama’s eligibility, including two that are scheduled to be discussed by the members of the U.S. Supreme Court. Others remain pending at the appellate level.

Those cases, however, almost all have been facing hurdles created by the courts’ interpretation of “standing,” meaning someone who is being or could be harmed by the situation. The courts have decided almost unanimously that an individual taxpayer faces no damages different from other taxpayers, therefore doesn’t have standing. Judges even have ruled that other presidential candidates are in that position.

The result is that none of the court cases to date has reached the level of discovery, through which Obama’s birth documentation could be brought into court.

“What we need are hundreds of thousands of Americans endorsing this strategy on the petition – encouraging more action by state officials before the 2012 election. Imagine if just one or two states adopt such measures before 2012. Obama will be forced to comply with those state regulations or forgo any effort to get on the ballot for re-election. Can Obama run and win without getting on all 50 state ballots? I don’t think so,” he said.

For 18 months, Farah has been one of the few national figures who has steadfastly pushed the issue of eligibility, despite ridicule, name-calling and ostracism at the hands of most of his colleagues. To date, in addition to the earlier petition, he has:

“Obama may be able to continue showing contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law for the next two years, as he has demonstrated his willingness to do in his first year in office,” he wrote in a column. “However, a day of reckoning is coming. Even if only one significant state, with a sizable Electoral College count, decides a candidate for election or re-election has failed to prove his or her eligibility, that makes it nearly impossible for the candidate to win. It doesn’t take all 50 states complying with the law to be effective.”

If you are a member of the media and would like to interview Joseph Farah about this campaign, e-mail WND.